Tag Archives: Moon

So – You’re Still Interested in Astronomy? Hello again. Last time, we looked at the many moons of Jupiter. If you remember, Jupiter has 67 all together, by far the largest retinue of any planet in the Solar System. Today, I thought we’d dip into 10 facts you might not have known about some of…

China’s Chang’e lunar probe dynasty is already having a great year. The Chang’e 3 lunar lander surpassed all expectations last week to emerge from its 14th hibernation while the Chang’e 5-T1 just completed its transfer from the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 2 into a stable orbit around the Moon. Chang’e 3’s main mission was only to…

PITTSBURGH – An outer-space delivery firm that is working with Carnegie Mellon University to put a privately owned lunar rover on the moon is offering to “mail” personal keepsakes to the moon as a way to help fund the partnership’s rocket launch. Astrobotic Technology and Carnegie Mellon are trying to get their lunar rover to…

Cold War competition between superpowers dominated the first decades of space travel and exploration. Individual governments took the lead, bankrolling most of the process in the name of competition and nationalism. Ultimately international cooperation and collaboration took root, and the landscape is already very different. The present and future of space exploration is more collaborative,…

A viral video making the rounds on the Internet supposedly shows a humanoid figure walking along the surface of the moon. The YouTube video, from user Wowforreel, has been seen more than 2 million times in less than a month. According to Australia‘s 9News, the owner of the YouTube channel said he started investigating the shadow…

Hi everyone. As you know, last time we took a look at 10 things you wanted to know about Enceladus. As promised, this time, we’re considering some of the things you might find interesting about another of the moons mentioned in that article, Europa. 1. What do we know about Europa? Europa is the 6th…

A detailed analysis of the shape of the Moon has shown that it isn’t a sphere – but instead slightly lemon-shaped. This has now revealed important clues as to how the Earth’s satellite body formed (and no, it still doesn’t involve any cheese). A paper published in the July 30 issue of Nature by Ian…

The moon goes through a regular set of phases every month or so – full moon, half moon, crescent moon, new moon and then back through them to full again – but every now and then, we hear about a Super Moon. So what is a Super Moon? Although astronomy has given us most of…

Space ace Buzz Aldrin has admitted glimpsing a UFO during his journey to the Moon – but insisted it was not an extraterrestrial visitation. The second man on the Moon answered questions during a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, touching on missions to Mars, aliens, and the dubious accuracy of the film Gravity. Aldrin’s…

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The “man in the moon” appeared when meteoroids struck the Earth-facing side of the moon creating large flat seas of basalt that we see as dark areas called maria. But no “face” exists on farside of the moon and now, Penn State astrophysicists think they know why. “I remember the first…

Newly analyzed lunar rocks have revealed the first direct evidence of the ancient smashup that created the moon, bolstering a long-held theory. The rocks were gathered by astronauts on NASA’s Apollo missions. But newer scanning electron microscopes have now allowed scientists to detect in them the first chemical traces of the Mars-size planet thought to have blasted…

The Moonhouse is designed to fly to the moon folded up in a shoebox-sized package. After it is placed on the moon, the art installation will unfold and self-assemble as an 8-foot-tall (2.5 meters) red house with white corners, a traditional design for many Swedish homes. It is expected to take anywhere from five to 15…

This coming August, the California-based private company Skycorp will attempt to contact and possibly regain control over NASA’s International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 satellite, a spacecraft NASA has no plans to reuse. That’s because the space agency has already repurposed ISEE-3, which launched on August 12, 1978, multiple times, stretching its useful lifetime more than anyone anticipated. So this upcoming attempt…

Funny thing. Skywatchers are often just as excited to watch a celestial object disappear as we are to see it make an appearance. Early Wednesday morning (May 14) the Full Flower Moon will slip in front of Saturn, covering it from view for about an hour for observers in Australia and New Zealand. If you don’t live where…